Forced labour in the global economy

There is a growing and sober awareness among international organisations and some advocacy groups that trafficking, slavery and forced labour are not anomalies perpetuated by a few ‘bad apple’ employers. Rather, severe labour exploitation is an endemic feature of the contemporary global economy. From slavery and trafficking in the production of shrimp in Thailand to artisanal cheese and clothing made by US prison labour, forced labour plays a significant role in commodity production, as well as care, domestic, and sex work. The need to address forced labour more systematically has been emphasised recently in the rise of calls to tackle ‘root causes’. Yet what actually are these root causes? How do they operate? Beyond the commonplace notion that ‘poverty’ renders workers vulnerable to abuse, or that this abuse constitutes ‘the underside of globalisation’, what do we actually know about the specific ways in which the structure of the global economy conditions both poverty and severe labour exploitation? Read on...

Unconditional basic income is not only feasible, but it also has more emancipatory potential than any other single policy because it targets economic vulnerability, the heart of all labour exploitation.

Forced labour is a symptom of a wider malaise facing workers in global supply chains. Governance gaps and skewed business structures are exacerbating inequality and must be tackled for workers to be properly protected.

International law lacks stringent mechanisms for ensuring worker protection in global supply chains. It is the responsibility of the wealthy nations which are home to major corporations to fill this legal gap.

Neoliberal migration and border regimes instantiate a de facto forced labour regime. Migration is increasingly key to providing capital’s precarious workforce, but unfree labour has long been central to global capitalism.

Climatic change compounds the vulnerabilities and dependencies existing between households in semi-arid South Asia. To avoid more coerced labour, public policy must address the root causes of such vulnerability.

There has been lots of talk about multinational corporations’ responsibility for fuelling forced labour. But what about the labour market intermediaries who recruit and supply vulnerable workers to these firms?

Income-based measures of poverty are unreliable for determining who is most vulnerable to forced labour. More nuanced understandings of vulnerability are required to effectively reduce forced labour in the global economy.

Beyond Trafficking and Slavery editors introduce their February issue exploring the political economic contexts of slavery, trafficking and forced labour, and examining global efforts to confront their root causes.

Beyond Trafficking and Slavery seeks to help those trying to understand forced labour, trafficking and slavery by combining the rigour of academic scholarship with the clarity of journalism. Our goal is to use evidence-based advocacy to unveil the structural political, economic, and social root causes of global exploitation.

Gendered, racist, classist, homophobic, and transphobic violence haunts the world of sex work. Sex workers speak. Who listens? addresses that violence, but it does so from the perspective of sex workers themselves. By publishing their voices directly we hope to help readers resist indifference and to become more critical of states’ interventions.

The BTS Short Course brings 167 contributions from 150 top academics and practitioners into the world’s first open access ‘e-syllabus’ on forced labour, trafficking, and slavery. This eight-volume set is packed with insights from the some of the best and most progressive scholarship available. Read on...